


pride lives

by betternovembers



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Baseball, Established Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 15:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15197375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betternovembers/pseuds/betternovembers
Summary: Beca gets a birthday present and baseball ensues. (Also: present day established relationship fic that pretends PP3 never happened because I refused to see it.)





	pride lives

**Author's Note:**

> This tweet (https://twitter.com/carolineframke/status/1013566693069619200), but Pitch Perfect fic. That's it, that's the fic.

She opens up the birthday card from her dad, and paper falls out. It’s not money, not that she super needs it, but she’s always been a little wary at her dad’s attempts at birthday presents since the Unfortunate Nickelback Incident of 2004. 

 

This time, they’re baseball tickets. She looks up, alarmed, knowing that this is going to be upgraded to capital letters status by the end of the night. 

 

“I figured you and Chloe and Jesse could all go, make a day out of it and you know, remember that you live in Atlanta. You’ve been here since your freshman year, Becs, and you still haven’t been to a game!”

 

“Well, I don’t like baseball so you can see how the conclusion is actually logical.”

 

Her dad just laughs, and pushes over the other present from Sheila. It’s a brand new Braves hat, with an “A” all done up in rainbow stitching.

 

Beca hates how much she loves them for trying.

 

 

\---

 

 

Jesse’s in right away, talking about looking up who the starting pitcher is and reminding her that the Braves are at the top of the East in the National League, as if she’s ever given thought to the current standings of Major League Baseball and where the Atlanta Braves might be on them before. 

 

(She, for the record, has not.)

 

“It’s going to be so much fun, Beca!” he tells her, and for a second she thinks about how her dad missed out on a son-in-law who says things like, “it’s going to be so much fun, Beca!” about baseball games. Whatever. It’s not like Jesse’s going anywhere, and her dad and Chloe nerd out about books all the time. He wins either way.

 

Chloe isn’t quite as enthusiastic, but she’s in for the beer and food and just because she’s a good human and she thinks Warren and Sheila are super thoughtful. She digs through some of the boxes they haven’t unpacked yet and emerges triumphant with a weather-worn hat that says Atlanta across the front, bill curved and fraying at the front.

 

She looks _extremely_ attractive in it, and Beca finally decides maybe this isn’t the worst birthday present ever after all.

 

 

\---

 

 

“Kiss Cams are the worst, like, think about zooming in on two people who don’t know each other and forcing them to kiss each other without previous consent.”

 

Jesse laughs, glove tucked under his arm—she still can’t believe he actually brought a _glove_ , did he think he was going to get on the field?—working on digging out a couple of twenties to cover their first round of beers and hot dogs. “It’s a Kiss Cam, Chloe, it’s just for fun–“

 

Chloe reaches up and tries to knock his hat off his head. “Don’t be such a _boy_ , Jesse. They’re gross.”

 

Chloe, as always, is right, and Beca just loves her so much. She reaches up herself and sends Jesse’s hat flying back a few steps as he squawks indignantly about the two of them teaming up against him when it’s just a thing that happens at baseball games and here he is paying for their beer and baseball is America’s pastime and it still has plenty of its own charm and traditions and whatever other emotions he’s secretly been hiding as a boy who apparently loves baseball, which is a thing Beca never knew about him until now. 

 

She has another thought, and turns to her girlfriend. “You thought it was cute in _Set It Up_ though.”

 

“Yeah, it super was. I contain multitudes, Beca. I can enjoy the Kiss Cam in limited fictional settings, especially when they involve Lucy Liu in a baseball hat, and maybe for people who are clearly together and down for some PDA. But you gotta be like, super into it,” and Chloe steps in even closer to Beca and raises her eyebrows in a challenge that Beca always loves accepting.

 

So, as always, she accepts.

 

“Now that’s gross,” Jesse says, not meaning it at all, and holding all three beers like a gentleman until they’re done.

 

 

\---

 

 

“They play _how many_ games in a season?”

 

Jesse’s trying, god bless him, to explain at least a few of the basics of the game to her and Chloe, like, beyond what they knew from watching _A League of Their Own_ an absurd amount of times. (Well, Chloe watched it an absurd amount of times, Beca pretended to not be interested at all except for the fact that even she cried when Betty Spaghetti gets the telegram about her husband.)

 

“162,” he says again.

 

Chloe leans in, and eyes how much beer is still in Beca’s cup. She’s been out for half an inning already. “That’s too many games,” Chloe says, settling for stacking their cups together and tucking the empties neatly under the seats to take up to the trash on the next beer run.

 

Jesse looks over like he’s going to defend baseball’s honor again, but then he accepts his fate and moves on to something that he knows they’ll agree with.

 

“I think it’s time for more beer, don’t you?” Both she and Chloe are enthusiastic supporters of this plan.

 

“Okay, but someone has to come up with me. They only sell two at a time, unless you have more people up there.”

 

Beca was super planning on making out with her girlfriend while Jesse went up and got more beer, and this is a very not-good wrinkle in her plan.

 

So she pouts. She’s very willing to take the low road to get what she wants.

 

“Jesse,” she says, her voice creeping only slightly into whine territory. “I got you the ticket.”

 

“Your dad got us the tickets, dude.”

 

“Just... make two trips and I’ll make it worth your while.”

 

He gives in, but he’s gone a suspiciously long time when he goes back for his own beer. He tells her he just went looking for a new hat at the team store, but he smiles into his beer while he drinks it a little too much for her liking. She knows him. She knows his plotting face. And this is definitely his plotting face.

 

She goes for the beer herself the next time. And maybe she tells Chloe to just slide over when she gets back, just in case. The buffer can’t hurt, and he’s not being weird at all with her, so. 

 

She’s definitely watching him though.

 

 

\---

 

 

It’s only like the top of the sixth but Jesse’s finally realized he needs to stop trying to talk about baseball and just give in on talking about all the other normal things they talk about, like music and movies Beca hasn’t seen and—

 

“I just wish this team wasn’t so racist,” Chloe sighs, out of nowhere.

 

“What?” Jesse asks, thrown by the topic change.

 

“The name of the team is literally the Braves,” Beca says.

 

“Yeah, I just… I guess I just never really thought about it like that.”

 

“Jesse,” Chloe says, drunk enough to turn her entire body to face him in her seat so she can put her hands on both his shoulders, “they have a tomahawk on their chests. It’s definitely about Native Americans.”

 

“Yeah but they’re not as racist as like, the Cleveland Indians. Or the Blackhawks. Or the Redskins.”

 

“I don’t think you get ‘less racist’ points for not being a team called the Redskins. I think you’re still just racist.”

 

Jesse considers this for a minute. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

 

They’re both quiet for a minute, Chloe looking up something on her phone, Jesse probably deciding how he approaches rooting for a team with a trash name now that it’s been called out to his face or how to swap back to talking about Cate Blanchett’s outfits in Ocean’s 8, who knows.

 

“The name got changed to the Braves when they were in Boston,” Chloe says, still looking at her phone, definitely on Wikipedia. “Of course it was Boston.”

 

She taps on some other link, and Beca pushes her sunglasses up to take a look when Chloe turns the phone in her direction. It’s definitely an old Atlanta Braves logo, and _yikes_.

 

“See? I told you. Racist.”

 

Beca nods. Chloe’s right.

 

 

\---

 

 

The Braves are up by a few runs over the Brewers—“Now that’s a good name,” Chloe had decided, always a fan of drinking—and Beca’s starting to wonder just how polite it is to get out of the park a little early to miss the rush out when the game ends when it happens.

 

She doesn’t even notice the cheesy music at first, she’s so zoned out it’s not until their section gets super loud around them that she looks up and sees—

 

It’s the Kiss Cam. And Jesse and Chloe are on it. And she’s not.

 

Jesse’s putting his hands up, and she can hear him shouting over the crowd noise, “No not me, not me!” Chloe is laughing, and then Beca is being kissed, _hard_ , and there’s a half-second pause and then the crowd around them absolutely _loses_ it and she knows the camera operator must have finally figured it out and panned over.

 

Someone she does not know claps her on the back, even while Chloe is still kissing her, and finally they break apart for some air, and Jesse is even whooping and hollering next to them. And it’s like some former Barden Bellas glory possesses her, but Chloe’s not the only one who knows how to work a crowd. She grabs Chloe’s hand and raises them both above their heads in a sign of victory, before actually standing up and pulling Chloe up with her to take a bow.

 

The camera operator moves on after that, thank god, but before Beca sits back down, she pushes past Chloe to get to Jesse.

 

He looks like a complete lunatic, grinning even still, totally not ashamed about being denied on the kiss cam by his best friend’s girlfriend or the fact that he even put them in the running to be on a goddamn Jumbotron at a baseball game.

 

He puts up his hand for a high five.

 

Chloe Beale, the love of her life and her favorite person, actually gives him a high five back around Beca.

 

They’re both _idiots_.

 

 

\---

 

 

“Well, I guess I don’t have to ask if you liked the game,” her dad opens when he calls later that night.

 

She doesn’t even want to know how he found out, honestly.

 

“I blame Jesse,” she replies, and Chloe tilts her head, asking who’s on the other end of the line without saying anything. “My dad,” she mouths.

 

“Thanks for the tickets, Warren!” Chloe leans in and says so her dad can hear her clearly. “We all had a _great_ time.”

 

And, as always, Chloe is right.


End file.
